See Catholics! This is how it's done. If you make fucking children legal first, no scandal.

Two and a half months after a Saudi “marriage official” married his 12-year-old high school sweetheart, some little 12-year-old girl, they fucked…cause I assume only a sick pervert would sleep with a 12-year-old girl on the wedding night. Every gentleman knows to wait a minimum of two and a half months.

Well, not quite:

In an interview with Al-Watan newspaper, the Mazoun said that he was warned by his father-in-law not to touch the bride for a year. However, the Mazoun’s mother insisted to consummate the marriage.

The Mazoun was shocked by her fragility. He said, “When my mother insisted I consummate my marriage, I had to summon up the courage for two weeks before I was able to have sex with her.”

…

The young wife has just finished her sixth grade and the Mazoun has proudly claimed that she has become a better housewife than a university graduate.

Child marriage is very common in Muslim countries. The prophet of Islam married Ayesha when she was six years old and had intercourse with her when she was nine years old.

Lovely. It’s really sad that Muslims are still too ashamed to admit that they and their prophet Mohammed have tiny penises and are terrible in the bedroom. C’mon guy. The desire for virgins and children with no sexual experience? You’re not fooling anyone.

1. Buddhist monk caught for filming naked women – Net Khai, a Cambodian Buddhist monk was arrested for filming naked women. Not just a few naked women but over 600 naked women bathing in holy water at a temple. The article doesn’t make it clear whether it was with the knowledge and consent of the women or not, which is kinda an important detail. But what’s interesting is that he’s been stripped of his monk status for this, while Catholic priests weren’t even defrocked for raping children.

2. Finally an easier way to become a vampire – Want to become a vampire but having trouble finding a vampire willing to turn you into one? Well now there’s an easier way. You can buy a vampire transformation spell.

3. David Silverman to be president of American Atheists – I’ve briefly met Silverman twice. Once last year at a Jolly 13 Club gathering and again a few months again at another big gathering of many skeptically themed groups at the same location that also happened to be on Silverman’s birthday. I have no idea how well he’ll do, but I wish him the best of luck. He takes over from Ed Buckner next week.

4. Burqas and niqabs banned from public spaces in France in 246-1 decision – To be fair, the Senate did have about 100 abstentions but still, it’s quite clear the French no likey the burqa. I remain still very undecided on this issue because on the one hand, I support free expression and oppose government telling people what they can’t wear but on the other hand, the burqa is an evil tool that’s been used to oppress Islamic women for a very long time. And as much as they claim to want to wear it, it’s only because they’ve been so indoctrinated as to embrace their own servitude. Now it can be argued that our culture is just the opposite, where women are pressured to wear less clothing. However, the cultural pressures are entirely different in the Western world and not nearly as dominant. As Richard Dawkins said when an imam commented about how we dress our women, “They dress themselves!”

5. IHOP sues religious fruitcakes – The Internation House of Pancakes (IHOP) is suing a Christian group calling themselves the International House of Prayer (IHOP) over illegal appropriating the brands famous acronym. After that trial is over, then maybe they can sue Steve Jobs.

6. Woody Allen comes out as an atheist…again - I don’t know why it came to a surprise to the NY Times that Allen was an atheist since this is hardly news but it was great to read Allen criticize both religion and psychics are nonsense.

1. Kissing gets you 90 lashes in Saudi Arabia – Saudi religious police have arrested a man and two women for “engaging in immoral movements in front of other shoppers” after being caught on a surveillance video “exchanging kisses and hugs.”

The man was sentenced to ninety lashes over three sessions, and some jail time. There is no word on the woman’s sentence; only that she would be tried in “another court”. It doesn’t take a theologian to know that the woman’s punishment is likely to be much harsher than his 90 lashes.

This is Islamic justice.

2. You too can learn to be a bigot - Peter LaBarbera, president of the ironically named Americans for Truth about Homosexuality is launching a seminar for kids to teach them how to properly hate gay people. They’re calling it the Americans for Truth Academy though I think a better name for it is the Ku Klux Klan for Kids (KKKK). It’s a far more accurate and a more memorable acronym. They’re even making sure to follow the steps outlined in The Cult Handbook by insulating themselves from dissenting views:

Prospective attendees will need to be approved with references; this is not open to pro-homosexual activists but only to those who share AFTAH’s belief that homosexuality is immoral and that the GLBT movement is destructive to America and a direct threat to our religious freedom.

Hmm, freedom is slavery; where have I heard that before? Apparently “pro-family values” means Orwellian totalitarianism.

3. Blag Hag calling for Abortionquake? - A few months ago, an idiotic Muslim cleric stated that earthquakes were caused by women’s immodest dress. This caused the blogger Blag Hag to launch Boobquake, a massive campaign to introduce this man’s idiocy to the world. Now she’s reporting that an American Christian minister is blaming the recent BP oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico on abortion. Okay, Blag Hag admits that unlike Boobquake, this one’s a bit trickier to scientifically test and so we should just move ahead to mocking the guy mercilessly. Okay, I guess that’s a lot easier, though I do mourn any missed opportunity to piss off the religious right.

“Yusuf has evaded on this matter for years,” he said. ”I call on the Minister for Immigration to deny Mr Yusuf a visa to enter Australia unless he publicly and categorically states that he does not and will not support the murder of any person for the expression of views, no matter how offensive.”

In other words, he wants the artist who once sang Peace Train to publicly condemn violence. I’m sure that will happen any day now. Yup, any day now.

In a South Australian legal first, the Supreme Court this afternoon gave the Women’s and Children’s Hospital the right to give a 10-year-old boy – a member of the Jehovah’s Witness faith – transfusions as part of his cancer treatment.

The decision, in line with similar rulings from around the world, paves the way for hospitals to take action in future debates with religious parents.

Sorry kid but you’re just going to have to wait a while before going to heaven.

1. TV presenter sentenced to death for ‘sorcery’ – Yup, that’s what our good friends Saudi Arabia does to those who predict the future and give out advice to their audiences. Couldn’t they just throw the guy in jail for fraud? I bet the psychic didn’t see this coming.

Ancient bite marks and fossilized feces discovered in Georgia are providing new details about a giant crocodile that roamed the Southeast United States about 79 million years ago.

And for those keeping count, that’s 78,994,000 years before the existence of the whole universe, according to Young Earth Creationists.

3. Bill Donohue defends child rapists…again – It seems like only a year ago that Donohue was defending child rapists in Ireland for decades of abuse. Now he’s being a child rapist apologist once again, making the same fallacious and erroneous argument that was made by Andrew Brown, that the Catholic Church has no greater amount of institutionalized child rape than many other unnamed organizations:

Employers from every walk of life, in both the U.S. and Europe, have long handled cases of alleged sex abuse by employees as an internal matter. Rarely have employers called the cops, and none was required to do so.

Of course no examples are provided. I wonder if Donohue knows that we’re talking about half a million raped children.

And that’s only that we know of. Anyway, Greta Christina did a far better job of ripping this argument to shreds than I can right now so check out her response to Andrew Brown.

When the popular 46-year-old Lebanese psychic Ali Sibat went on-air and made his predictions about the future, the phone lines of the satellite television station Sheherazade used to be flooded with calls.

But what the star psychic probably did not predict was that his claims to supernatural prowess would land him a death sentence.

“He was the most popular psychic on the channel,” the Lebanese news agency Naharnet quoted Sibat’s lawyer May Khansa as saying. “The number of callers, including from all over the gulf, spiked in number when he appeared.”

As much as I abhor phony psychics taking advantage of credulous people, they don’t deserve a death sentence for it. While I’d love to see the U.S. government did a better job of cracking down on these conmen and promising harsher penalties, obviously this goes too far and for the wrong reasons. This guy isn’t getting punished because he’s taking advantage of people but because a superstitious backward society thinks he has some kind of magical powers that he couldn’t possibly possess.

On Nov. 9, Sibat was given a death sentence by a Mecca court for allegedly practicing witchcraft.

Sibat’s fate is common in Saudi Arabia.

Scores of alleged witch doctors, fortunetellers, and black magicians each year are dragged through the Saudi courts, including Fawza Falih, who’s been on death row since 2006 for witchcraft.

Her accusers include a man who claims the 51-year-old, illiterate Falih is the reason for his impotence.

Why, you might ask, is a genie being sued? For alleged theft and harassment, duh! Genies gotta live too, you know. And the harassment was in the form of “threatening voicemails.” I cannot contain my laughter any further. This story is so ridiculous. Some dude made crank phone calls and I’m guessing said that they were a genie. . .and this family bought it. But maybe I’m giving them too much credit. Maybe nobody called them or they did receive threatening voicemails but just immediately assumed that caller had to have been a genie.

Oh, but don’t worry. This story gets better:

The lawsuit filed in Shariah court accuses the genie of leaving them threatening voicemails, stealing their cell phones and hurling rocks at them when they leave their house at night, said Al-Watan newspaper.

Clearly no other possibility exists. As everyone knows, only genies have the power and the inclination to throw rocks at people at night when it’s dark.I’m suddenly reminded of the “elves” in Iceland.

“We have to verify the truthfulness of this case despite the difficulty of doing so,” Sheikh Amr Al Salmi, the head of the court, told Al-Watan. “What makes this case and complaint more interesting is that it wasn’t filed by just one person. Every member of the family is part of this case.”

. . .

“We began hearing strange noises,” the head of the family, who requested anonymity, told Al-Watan. “In the beginning, we didn’t take it seriously, but after that, stranger things started happening and the children got really scared when the genie began throwing stones.”

Your idiots and embarrassments to the human race. But then again, maybe I’m being too harsh. It’s not like they’re claiming that the genie had the power to turn water into wine, demanded they eat his flesh and blood which looks suspiciously like a Trisket, or rose from the dead. Now that would be crazy!